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Atryn writes: "Cingular Wireless is reportedly blocking its customers from accessing 'objectionable material" via the Wireless Web.' The spokesman mentioned in the story disclaims knowledge of any blocking -- can any Cingular customers reading this confirm it?

That's not the point, the point is Cingular is setting a very dangerous precedent here. They are electing to limit bandwidth not based on the volume of data transfered but on its content. As we know, the consumer drives the market and if consumers want the ISP to filter the Internet WITHOUT their permission then other companies will adopt this policy. Pretty soon there will be no other option for people that want their Internet in its original unfiltered state.

What will the world be coming to? I work hard, I follow the rules, I play fair. And in return what do I get? The ability to watch ASCII porn on my phone yanked out from under me. If I want to wait the fifteen minutes per image, so be it. I needs my porn. Boycott! Boycott!

Deja doesn't show alt.binaries newsgroups - many employers block pages with swearwords in - employees get fired for sending e-mails with porn attachments - well this had to happen sooner or later didn't it? However you'd think a mobile phone company would be more interested in increasing the revenue per a customer than annoying them. Putting an error page instead was a good idea though because people think its a problem with the website and not with their mobile phone company.

I see this posted so often -- but it is incorrect. Censorship doesn't have to be done by the government (that's why radio and television have staffed censors, where even if they are inspired by the government, they each adhere to their own in-house standards).

The thing which differentiates censorship from filtering is that censorship implies that the reason for removal is that the material in question was found to be objectionable (by the censor, whoever he or she is) for some reason. Thus, censorship is filtering based on the morals or the objectives of the censor. What the parent is objecting to is that in this case, it's the company who decides what's objectionable, and not the user.

Here's the webster definition of "censor", which is very similar to the dictionary.com one:

1 cen.sor \'sen(t)-sr\ n (15c)
[L, fr. censre to assess, tax; akin to Skt asati he recites]
1: one of two magistrates of early Rome acting as census takers, assessors,
and inspectors of morals and conduct
2: one who supervises conduct and morals: as
2a: an official who examines materials (as publications or films) for
objectionable matter
2b: an official (as in time of war) who reads communications (as letters)
and deletes material considered harmful to the interests of his organization
3: a hypothetical psychic agency that represses unacceptable notions
before they reach consciousness-- cen.so.ri.al \sen-'sr--l,
-'sr-\ adj

At the risk of being accused of karma whoring, I've pulled a couple of relevant definitions from Dictionary.com [slashdot.org]:

cen sor ship [dictionary.com] n 1. The act, process, or practice of censoring.
2. The office or authority of a Roman censor.
3. Psychology. Prevention of disturbing or painful thoughts or feelings from reaching consciousness except in a disguised form.cen sor [dictionary.com] n 1. A person authorized to examine books, films, or other material and to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable.
2. An official, as in the armed forces, who examines personal mail and official dispatches to remove information considered secret or a risk to security.
3. One that condemns or censures.
4. One of two officials in ancient Rome responsible for taking the public census and supervising public behavior and morals.
5. Psychology. The agent in the unconscious that is responsible for censorship.

Although the definition of censor includes the example of an army official, it seems pretty clear to me that any agent that determines whether content is morally or politically or otherwise objectionable, is acting as a censor. Corporations practice this all the time for various reasons, including marketing concerns (e.g., "We need a clean version of this album or Wal-Mart won't buy it.") I'll grant you that this is not automatically a violation of the First Amendment, and that it's not always objectionable. However, it's not exactly in the spirit of Free Speech, either.

NB: If we use the above definitions, then Cingular may be engaging in censorship. Of course, we have to find out if they're actually blocking porn, first.

Your parent can co-sign for you. I had my first cell phone at 16. I paid it all and everything, but the CC was my parents. Take a look around yourself. Do you REALLY think that only 18+ people have cell phones? You go to the mall nowadays and there are 11-year-olds chatting it up on their brand new phone.

A bookstore is offering you material that you can choose to buy or not to buy. A library is a free, public-funded service.

A wireless service provider is a service that you have already paid for. It is possible to choose between different providers, but you still can't claim full resemblance. Basically, both a bookstore and a library should be able to control what information gets transmitted using their resources; a wireless provider should not.

I was getting credit card offers from the time I was 14.I conceivably could have gotten a license at 16.Online retailers (at least Amazon, who sold me mine) don't ask about licenses, anyway.

Then again, I probably could have bought porn at the local corner store as a young teen, anyway.

If I had a kid, I'd buy him a mobile phone, as well, for emergency use only (or limit him to a flat rate program, as a reward for chores, etc.) I'd restrict the internet for him (until he became a teenager, anyway) because if he was my offspring, he'd probably enjoy ascii porn as much as I did when I was a kid.

(Imagine the father-son discussion that could happen: "when i was your age, I had to look at ascii boobs at 1200 baud.")

For some reason I keep getting a Proxy error on my Cingular phone when I visit a lot of sites...INCLUDING THOSE ON CINGULAR'S SITE!!

"Cannot display malformed content" is one I get on some parts of Cingular's site...

It looks like some of the other sites I visit are okay now, Slashdot's site came up for the first time...I was using it to get an error and I can't get an error on any webpage anymore...(something about upstream content to the proxy)...Looks like it was fixed...Now time to go find some pr0n!

Ok let me start that Cingular doesn't have any business telling its customers where they should and should not go on the internet.

That said, how many people are out there looking at porn on a cell phone? Besides the obvious limitations of an image on a black-and-white LCD screen, do some people really need their fix of pr0n so spontaneously that they can't get to their computer or local magazine stand?

Given the size of most cell phone displays perhaps they are doing a public service by blocking pr0n by saving people from unneeded eye strain. Ok, so I am reaching....

I'm just waiting for a voice over IP chat application on my cell phone. I think this will be the killer app for internet enabled cell phones. Imagine the convenience of being able to have a voice conversation on your internet enabled cell phone with another internet enabled cell phone user.

I am waiting for the RIAA backed $20/month option from Verizon Wireless and Kazza to store 16MB worth of 56kbit/sec encoded music that you can stream to your phone for "access to your music anywhere, anytime".

Ham packet radio and even CB are subjected to the FCC's rather stringent requirements against profanity and obscenity. I remember this being a big deal when I daydreamed about setting up a packet-radio ISP link in the early 1990s -- even sort-of-innocuous newsfroups like rec.nude could get you into trouble. I'm not sure what's different now with 802.11b.

They are in a "no-need for license" free forall location in the microwave spectrum. This was originally set aside expect only the military to use it but then cordless phones, 802.11b, and bluetooth appeared. They are perfectly legal in this band as long as the broadcasting power is under a certain limit. Since each device doesn't require an independent license, they don't fall under the same FCC laws that radios and other communication devices do.

My understanding is that at least one of the wireless carriers has a list of 280 words you can't send via wireless. (Unless it's pay based, then they don't care). They fear that they might offend someone, and have a class action lawsuit brought against them.

Don't even think of saying "redneck"... it's offensive.

I've seen the future, it's not free, open 802.11b, it's people using WAP phones playing games, paying 20 cents to get the high score on a round of a trivia game, ending up huge phone bills. Just think AOL before they went flat rate.

Why is pr0n 'bad' for kids? When I was a kid, I looked at pr0n out of curiosity of what the big deal was. From puberty on, I looked at pr0n because of raging hormones. I wasn't sexually active as a teen, but sure looked at a lot of pr0n. It didn't turn me into Osama bin Laden.

I just don't understand why Americans get into such a snit over sex and pornography; and yes, it's mostly Americans. Most everywhere else in the world porn and sex aren't that big of a deal.

You can't really censor out pr0n; when I didn't get it from BBSes there was always my dad's magazine collection. It's just not worth the effort, except for stamping out child porn. I mean, really, can anyone demonstrate that pornography is bad for kids?

I just don't understand why Americans get into such a snit over sex and pornography; and yes, it's mostly Americans.

It's a moot point. American culture is what God intended. God hates panders, sodomites and pornographers. Therefore America cannot have porn. America is the end of history and is what is supposed to happen, therefore the rest of the world's mores are wrong and must be subjugated to American will.

I am being outrageous to make a point, but talking morality to Americans is like talking seal clubbing to a polar bear. They have it down, any other voice or idea is wrong. Just watch Fox News [foxnews.com] for a fair and balanced assessment of the subject.;-p Anybody who says 'boo' to the opposite is a heathen devil sodomite who buggers little boys and votes for Al Gore.

All right, now this is getting slightly off topic, but possibly still just slightly, so: in response. Let me preface this by saying this is anecdotal personal experience.

In my early teen years I used to be all about the porn, "raging hormones" and whatnot. Then I came to the realization that looking at porn affected my view of women. No, it didn't completely desensitize me to their feelings and needs, but I did think about them in a purely sexual context more often when I was regularly looking at porn. Now that I consciously avoid pr0n the amount of time that i spend thinking about women in a sexual context has greatly decreased.

I'm not saying that the viewing of pornography is necessarily bad, but especially at the very impressionable stages in a young boy's life (or girl's life, although girls seem to have less of a propensity for pornography), viewing pornography could cause a boy to view the opposite sex more as objects, and less as equal humans.

I'm sorry, but I get so sick of hearing this shit from so many people. There's this wonderful myth floating around a handful of EU countries that America is nothing but a land of prudes. "Most everywhere else in the world" actually seem to think that we're The Great Satan: a nation of nothing but drunk, dope addicted fornicators.

When terrorist in Asia, Africa, and South America slaughter innocent tourists as fast as they can claiming they will do anything to stop the spread of "American culture" it's not because they are afraid we may steer their daughters away from a profitable career in adult videos.

Getting worked up when Madonna kisses a black guy who is playing Jesus

Getting bent out of shape over a woman athlete posing in Playboy

Huffiness over topless beaches

Nervous titters: "Phone call for Master Bates"

You need to get a clue. Where are the Asian, African and South American tourists being slaughtered? Is this recent news? German tourists drop like flies in Miami. But wait, that's different. They should know better than to get lost in one of "those" neighborhoods. In Germany, there aren't any of "those" neighborhoods. Jackass.

WTF? Where's the connexion between pr0n and terrorism? It must be as tenuous as the current anti-drug commercials so prevalent on American television. Where do terrorists get their money for weapons? Historically, it's from the United States of America. Drugs are bad, of course, unless they're funding an illegal American war in Central America.

My quip about pr0n not turning me into Osama bin Laden was simply a comment that looking at pr0n as a kid doesn't turn that kid into a maladjusted adult.

Quite the contrary, sex education that promotes responsible sex - both gay and straight - without moralising about it results in healthy, well-adjusted adults. It reduces unwanted pregnancy and transmission of STDs. Compare the percentages of Dutch kids having unwanted pregnancies versus American kids, infection rates, and so on. The policies of "protecting kids" does just the opposite, yet admitting it undermines the entire "moral" underpinnings of education. It's simply insane.

You may be sick of hearing it, but Americans are prudes. Horrific violence on television and in cinema is quite acceptable, while curse words and nakedness are taboo. When's the last time you've seen a cock on TV or film, even rated "R". Breasts are fine on pay channels, but other "naughty bits" are left to "adult" channels. In America, apparently only adults are allowed to have sex or exposure to sexuality.

Now, totally OT, but picking up on the tangent:

The reason many other countries are pissed off at America because of its foreign policy, not because of strip clubs and pr0n. America is like a spoiled schoolyard bully and its "allies" his gang. Most other kids are relieved that America just steals them blind and doesn't beat the crap out of them. As the Japanese are fond of saying "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down", thus the reluctance of most countries to tell America to piss off.

Porn is bad for everybody, not just kids. The reason why society wants to protect children from porn is that they don't want the kids (who are quite impressionable) to get the wrong ideas about what sex is supposed to be about. Sex is supposed to be an expression of mutual love between two people, something that pornographers go to great lengths to destroy.

One of the problems with porn, from a societal standpoint, is that it encourages withdrawal of the individual from beneficial sexual relationships. At no point does porn have any redeeming social qualities - it encourages people to engage in selfishness, to treat the opposite sex as nothing more than a means to an end, and destroys the ability of the viewer to enjoy actual sexual intercourse.

Okay, so now I'll put on the flamesuit to say what I really mean. Don't take this personally, but just consider what I'm saying.

After all, why would you look at pictures of sex, when you can actually have sex? Oh, right, I get it - you spend all your time looking at porn, so you have no wife, and can't get one either, because you've never actually learned to interact with real women. Oh, what's that? You do have a wife? Well she must not be that great if you're looking elsewhere for sexual gratification.

I don't mean this as a personal attack, but rather to wake some people up as to the reality of the self-degradation that pornography really is. It doesn't have any good qualities; though you may consider it your "right" to view porn, consider this: just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

To me - and many others - sex is not an expression of mutual love between two people. It's two (or more!) people having fun, enjoying the sexual experience together. This is exactly the problem I have with this "morality" business. What sex means to you and what it means to me are quite different. I do not want your view of sex foisted upon me, nor should my view get forced on anyone else. This is why freedom of expression exists.

Why must entertainment have redeeming social qualities? Does "The Terminator" have redeeming social qualities? Entertainment comes in many different forms; if you don't find pornography entertaining, don't watch it. But don't interfere with the right of others to do so.

The objection to pornography on the grounds that it objectifies people as sexual objects is ridiculous. People lust after other people, regardless of whether or not they're acting in a skin flick. Whether you see other people selfishly as only objects of sexual desire says more about a person's lack of character than it does of the pornography industry. I'm quite able to have non-sexual interactions with other people - that consists of most of my interaction with other people. Can I have a strong non-sexual relationship with someone I'm attracted to? Sure. Can I have a strong relationship with someone I'm NOT sexually attracted to. Yup.

As to the question of why I'd look at pictures of sex when I can have sex - well, I wouldn't. When I can have sex, I have sex. When I can't have sex, I don't have sex. I think that's true of most people.

Regarding a partner. First, you assume I'm straight, and yes it's a correct assumption. No, I'm not married and have no desire to get married; I don't believe in the institution of marriage.

Yes, I've had loving, intimate relationships that have lasted longer than most marriages. Nor do I believe that intimate relationships must necessarily be sexually monogamous; that depends on how you and your partner feel about it.

Do I find my girlfriend sexy and think she's great? Sure. Just because I look at pornography or have sex with other women doesn't mean that I don't love her and find her satisfying. Just because you love steak doesn't mean that you won't eat chicken. Sex is an appetite. By the same standard, I don't get bent out of shape when she looks at pornography or has sex with other people.

Obviously, I don't subscribe to the puritanical view of sex that you describe. I just don't find pornography self-degradating or degradating of others. The reason that women are viewed as objects aren't because people lust after them after seeing pornography; it's because Western culture has historically treated them as property at worst and second-class citizens at best.

As to the right to do stuff: yes, it's my right to view porn. And yes, just because I can do something doesn't mean that I should. For example, just because I have unfiltered internet access at work and CAN view porn at work doesn't mean that I should view porn at work. I don't. Of course, that's not what you meant. But I can't think of another context where I'd find it wrong to look at porn.

So the real question is, are they filtering on method or on content? i.e. are sites with plenty of pictures forbidden regardless of content, or is it all sites about sex, regardless of whether or not the site has pictures or just text? What about searches using google? Will they prevent you from reading cached versions of adult content? What if it only looks like adult content?

For example, the WAP address wap.sex.com can be viewed on cell phones
using Verizon Wireless, Nextel Communications and Sprint PCS wireless
Internet services. But the same URL entered into a Cingular Wireless
device returns the message "your client is not allowed to access the
requested object."

But in France, Germany, and most of the rest of the Continent, the
pickings are still slim. One trouble is that many phone companies are
still in the beginning phases of WAP, and they block access to other
service providers. This is known in the industry lingo as a ''closed
garden.'' And for the time being, that garden has high fences. When I
go to Germany with my French Web phone, I can only gain access to the
Web through an international call to France, where I get a French
weather report. This will change in the next year or two as phone
companies adapt their Web services for roaming travelers.

Moreover, the speed hike only seemed to make a marginal difference
over other wireless Web phones I've tried; I was still viewing text,
and you must punch too many menu keys to access particular
screens. And whenever I entered the Web address for usatoday.com, I
received the following message: "WAP Gateway: Your client is not
allowed to access the requested object."

What may have happened is that the sources tried to get to porn
sites, didn't work, and then concluded that those sites were being
banned in specific. But it could be a general compatibility
problem affecting many sites.

That's true, my wireless web minutes are extremely expensive. That's enough deturant for most of us, so if you're willing to pay the price then why not let them? If it really got bad you could bump up the price once they use a certain amount.

What provider do you use where your wireless web minutes are expensive? For SprintPCS, if you sign up for the Wireless Web option ($5/mo) they come out of your voice minutes. I have 2800 non-peak minutes which I'll probably NEVER come close to using on my PDA, and my total bill is $40 or $45/mo. That's not even close to expensive.

I use sprintpcs and the minutes just get deducted from my pool of minutes... which I have a LOT of. But the thing is... its a 14.4k connection. What masochist is out there downloading porn through that? It would take a minute for a boob to show up. Jeez.

No ifs, ands, or buts. Censorship is just a bad thing. If they have bandwidth problems, they can rate limit the users. That's an entirely different concept than limiting them based on the content of the traffic.

This absolutely IS censorship. Just because it is a company and not the government...that doesn't change what it is.

"If you don't like the agreement, find another provider. It's their bandwidth."

There are two problems with this. First, most people with Cingular have signed some sort of contract. They don't have the option to leave, unless they pay some big fine, for something that wasn't in the contract when they signed. Second, the users pay for the bandwidth. If the phones run at 14.4 K, Cingular should have provisioned for users using 14.4 K. You can use up just as much bandwidth at amazon.com as you can at xxx.com over a 14.4 connection.

Finally, you all have forgotten the most important issue. If a company like Cingular starts censoring what people can see over their phones using bandwidth that they bought and people let it happen, it opens the door for other types of censorship. This is just like opening the can of worms (not like it hasn't been opened before but....)

How would I know if I was downloading porn or not? Kind of hard to see details in that tiny little screen. Lets see....white dot surrounded by a lot of black dots. Hey! Thats a.... oh, nevermind, it was a picture of mickey mouse.

Even if this is true, its NOT A CASE OF CENSORSHIP. People on Slashdot tend to throw that word around far too freely. When a company stops you from doing or saying something on their equipment (even if you pay for it/lease it), that's not censorship...If you don't like their policy, use a competitor. If the GOVERNMENT mandated that cell phone web access couldn't include smut, THAT would be censorship.

We're not talking about legality here. I know Cingular *can* do whatever it wants. But censorship is still a bad thing, and like any other bad thing and I don't have to be OK about it. It seems you're taking a very market oriented approach, and even though that's not always a suitable approach, I'll use it anyway and still make you look like a fool.

One requirement to have perfect competition and a perfectly efficient market (something you seem to be *assuming* exists) is that the consumers have perfect knowledge. According to theory in aperfectly efficient market, everyone must know everything there is to know about the product to ensure they are making an informed decision. That, coupled with the fact that theory assumes that everyone who takes place in the market is rational (not true, but lets assume it anyway), then we are simply complaining and creating a ruckus so that people know what cingular is doing.

Just as a side point, this is from the company whose ad campaign exclaims that we all have a right to free expression.

Excellent point, and one I wish our government would heed (oh, if it would only protect the consumers in this day and age of much-needed CFR!). This issue crops up all the time, whether you are talking about hidden stuff in Windows XP, opt-in versus opt-out issues, and even labeling of GM foods.

The marketplace, bottom line, is no longer free. It has been usurped by those who would fund their congresscritter to keep the playing field non-level.

Thus Slashdot becomes one of the few last bastions of Freedom in this day and age. Serious. Of course,./ is turning into just another 'toy review' website, I'm afraid, because 'everyone has to make a buck', and you apparently cannot 'buck' consumerism as the be-all and end-all arbitator of Truth and Trend.

Cell phone signals, like broadcast television and radio, travels through a medium owned by the public and that, to me, limits what they can censor (and it is censorship.) Unlike the phone line, it isn't really coming to the requestor over wires, but through a public medium. Yes, the questionable content does come to their equipment before it can be transmitted, but, by the time they know it as questionable it has already touched their equipment. If they choose not to send it back to the requestor, it is like a 'bleeped' television spot only on a private telephone call. I don't believe a telephone company has the right to that kind of control. There is a reason the Bells can't do it and I don't think a cell phone is that much different.

See, this here is what I don't understand about the state of the telecoms world.

Your statement:

...you degrade everyone elses service as well, even if you are paying for your chunk...

See, my immediate and overriding thought is: I'm the CUSTOMER. I give you money, you give me bandwidth. How I use it is up to me. I've bought - BOUGHT - bandwidth from you, and now you're putting all these restrictions on me because you didn't do your sums correctly and you're making a loss from insufficient service provision.

The same applies in spades to all the cable modem, ADSL, and prepaid dialup plans we see getting post-hoc restrictions placed on them. To me, this looks like the service provider is an incompetent cretin that can't do their sums, work out how much capacity they've *bought*, how much they *need* to service their paying customers, and charge appropriately right off the bat.

Seriously, folks, is the corporate world so seriously screwed up that no-one is capable of this?

Back in the "bad old days" you leased the phone from Bell. You still lease phone lines from the phone company.

Did/does Bell block you from phoning 900 numbers?

Did/does Bell block you from phoning _any_ numbers?

If Bell did block you from certain phone numbers, was it because you were breaking the law in some way?

If not, did you sue?

Now you see where we're heading with this.

Heck, does the airline say how you have to sit in their seats on the plane?

Does the bus driver tell you not to stand up on your leased seat on the bus?

Does a nightclub owner tell you how to dance?

Apart from safety/legal restrictions, no. If there's any other restrictions (like no torn jeans at a club) you are politely informed prior to entering the club that it isn't acceptable.

>If you don't like it, get another ISP, but ultimately that's the way it works.

Normally when you are discriminated against due to your thoughts clashing with those of another without prior warning or them having a good solid legal reason to stop you from accesing/doing certain things, the lessor may be on the hook for a lawsuit.

Depends where you are and how severely they decide to restrict you.

EG: If you leased an apartment and decide to bring a leather sofa in it and the landlord stopped you, it had either better be in the lease agreements (specifically) or be a fire hazard, because otherwise its expected you can put furniture in an apartment.

Now, if you decided to bring a box of bongs in the apartment the landlord would have good reason to stop you.

Since most pornography is legal in the USA I don't see how the phone/cable company has a right to censor unless they wrote "We will censor anything we want, such as pornography, at any time" into your agreement.

But, last I looked, Cingular isn't the Government (tho they probably do own a chunk of it.)

Check your service agreement for those nasty little phrases like, "Cingular reserves the right to...", which give them all the clout they need.

All the clout you need is to go find someone who doesn't have those little phrases in the contract and subscribe to their service. You probably have that right, as, last I looked, no bills have passed the House binding you to indentured servitude.

The reason the cable providers got their pooch screwed was based primarily on two flawed assumptions. One, that people would use the same total bandwidth that they used over 56K, only in shorter bursts. And secondly, that the market was infinite and exponential growth would continue indefinitely.

Of course, the average person was using more than their allocated amount of bandwidth, but due to a massive influx of users, new lines were being laid all the time, so there was always more bandwidth than was needed. Until they slowed down with the infrastructure development that is. Then the overbooking of bandwidth came back to bite them in the ass and left them with little choice, either raise the prices, or restrict the bandwidth.

From their point of view, restricting the bandwidth, especially upstream, made more sense. Of all of their customers 95% of them probably used the service as expected. A little email here, a little web surfing there. Download the occasional mp3 and keep it connected all the time. Its the remaining 5% that created all the problems. And we know who they are. The bandwidth caps and other restrictions probably didn't even affect most of the other 95%, so if they lost some customers, better the 5% that were more or less abusing the network rather than lose over 50% of their customers due to a price hike to afford 5% of the users.

Yes, they probably should have assumed that this abuse would have taken place. And it would have made even more sense from their point of view to simply track down and kick off the worst abusers.

and the fact that the companies are run by total morons should be my problem:) I was on a 12 month contract with pac-bell when they re-did the news groups. It took a photocopy of my contract but I was payed off for the remaining time and they acknowledged that they broke the contract. I kept the equipment and got money back...read those contracts:)

If you want to view porn on your cell phone, find another provider. But the majority of "wireless web" customers will probably be using it for low-bandwidth purposes like e-mail and stock quotes. Those users don't want their network--which they pay for--clogged by mobile perverts. Bandwidth is not an infinite resource, particulaly when it comes to mobile phones.

News for you: The customer is not always right, and Cingular's customers don't own the network. Cingular does (or it leases the network, nitpick, nitpck). Cingular does have the right to filter "objectionable material," and you, if you don't like that, have a right to do business with another company.

Seriously, folks, is the corporate world so seriously screwed up that no-one is capable of this?

You don't understand how business works. Engineering says "We can do this for $X." Marketing says "We can sell this to Y customers at $Z/month". Management sees that Y * $Z > $X and gives the go-ahead.

Later, Marketing discovers that their estimates and assumptions were off, but Engineering's already ordered the hardware so they've made their investment and can't go back. Management asks Marketing to raise the price to cut demand, and Marketing says "We're at the bend in the curve: If we charge a tiny bit more we'll lose so many customers that the whole thing will be a total failure."

So Management does the next best thing to raising rates for everyone: They change the TOC (limit bandwidth) enough to drive off the few high-cost customers while keeping the vast majority of customers, whose bandwidth is well within their capacity. Predictable, really.

Whatever the reason, if you are renting their service, you must agree to their stipulations - not the other way around. It's just like when you rent an apartment and the landlord says "no loud parties!" You'd have a tough time convincing him "But I BOUGHT the apartment, I can do whatever I want in it!"

This analogy clearly fails. Your's is a logical fallacy known as a bait-and-switch.

The original question was: "Does my use of cel phones to look at porn over the web harm anyone else?" You tried to compare this to hosting loud parties in your apartment -- a completely different scenario. If I hold loud parties in my apartment, it degrades the apartment-dwelling experience for my neighbors. The people upstairs can't sleep at night with the noise, the people downstairs have beer cans thrown on their porch, and its all just a big mess.

What data I download, however, regardless of its (im)moral content, is irrelevant. Whether I download email containing the four byte string "CAKE" or the four byte string "F***", the load on the network has been the same. If I'm a businessman who downloads some eighty-odd messages to my cel phone every two hours, that's 30 Kb of data. 30,000 bytes.

If I'm a guy who likes looking at nude pictures once in a while, a 30,000 byte GIF image is still 30,000 bytes. The load on the network has been the same.

ISPs have no right to regulate the content trafficking its network based on "moral" or any other perceived "value." The information in the bytes is irrelevant to the performance of the network.

To further pick at your argument, you state that "those who watch porn are less likely to pay the bills." If they don't pay the bills, they get disconnected. Simple as that. How does blocking porn from their network improve the financial value to the ISP? I fail to see the connection.

On a tangent, as long as I'm in the comment box. If the network does claim some "moral value" to the content on its network, and polices incoming data, I'd say that this would leave them in a dangerous legal quandry. Do/did Al Quaida operatives use Verizon cel phones in the USA? Just because it's not porn doesn't make it moral. If they are going to start denying packets based on their moral value, they'd better examine their ability to feasably do so, before they find themselves in some sort of lawsuit regarding discrimination, IMO.

Sounds like a market-based solution. When they sell bandwidth, they should assume it will be used, and prepare their infrastructure accordingly. This sounds just like the crap that was pulled by many an ISP over the years of selling more bandwidth than they actually own. Basically an ISP would sign up a ton of 56K customers, but not own enough bandwidth to provide more than a fraction of them with the amount of bandwidth they'd purchased at once. If the fraction is small enough, then they can get away with it. If not, then their customers will experience problems. This is not the fault of the customers, it is the fault of the ISP for overestimating its ability to handle the simultaneous demand for the bandwidth it sold. The customers are simply using what they paid for.

I've got news for you -- this is standard fare. Check the TOS for your ISP, and I bet that if they provide web space, then they also dictate what can be stored in that space.

Well, most will say, it's their server. True. I work for a data center, and we don't allow spam generators nor pornography, even if it's accessed through your own domain. Why? Because we don't want it on our floorspace. It can always be tracked back to us courtesy of ARIN or a similar service, which can be bad for business if someone finds out.

There are responsible adult sites out there -- danni.com and playboy.com come to mind -- but by and large the sites that are out there are questionable at best. It's our equipment, our floorspace, our circuits. Therefore, we dictate what can go on them.

Incidentally, though I see the logic in the TOS we use, I don't entirely agree with it. If Playboy or Danni.com wanted to move to us, I wouldn't personally have a problem with it, since they are reputable, profitable (well, Danni.com is, anyway), and would represent a nice chunk of change, some of which would end up in my bonus check. I think it should be case-by case, with a 30-day cancellation option on our end if we deem the site objectionable from a business-practices point of view. But that's just my opinion, and I'm not the owner.:)